"And of course there is the pursuing villain--usually a hero-villain in fact, a split personality with noble qualities as well as base--who embodies the audience's pressing desires and fears." -4
"Gothic shows the dark side, the world of cruelty, lust, perversion, and crime that, many of us at least half believe, is hidden beneath established conventions. Gothic tears through censorship, explodes hypocrisies, to expose the world as the corrupted, reeking place it is--or so its proponents maintain." - 4
"Gothic is the art of haunting, and in two senses. Gothic shows time and again that life, even at its most ostensibly innocent, is possessed, that the present is in thrall to the past. All are guilty." - 5
"The ethos of facile transcendence...is that you can transform yourself into a higher being with little or no exertion required." - 6
Types of Gothic:
1) Terror Gothic (Freddy Krueger & O.J. Simpson)
2) Apocalyptic Gothic (Frankenstein & the USSR)
3) Internalized Gothic (Freud and
"The motif of the double...is...essential to the Gothic vision." - 9
"To be a Gothic antagonist, a character has to embody some measure of the good, even if it is a specious good." - 15
"Gothic thrives in a world where those in authority--the supposed exemplars of the good--are under suspicion. The mind of terror senses hypocrisy in high places." - 20
"To Hollywood, the Frankenstein story...is all about the dangers of technology and mad professors who sin against nature...More broadly, of course, the target is humanity, competing with Mother Nature when we should stand in awe." - 25
"Frankenstein is about mankind (the creature) facing an uncomprehending god...about the corrupting power of society...about the perils of repression, with the monster playing the role of Victor's murderous unconscious; about the role fo the artist and his work of art, takig n, as the saying goes, a life of its own." - 25
"But what makes the superego a hero-villain? The fact that we do not want to slay it out and out because we fear the consequences. Without inner prohibitions, anarchy would be loosed on the world." - 35
"Gothic shows the dark side, the world of cruelty, lust, perversion, and crime that, many of us at least half believe, is hidden beneath established conventions. Gothic tears through censorship, explodes hypocrisies, to expose the world as the corrupted, reeking place it is--or so its proponents maintain." - 4
"Gothic is the art of haunting, and in two senses. Gothic shows time and again that life, even at its most ostensibly innocent, is possessed, that the present is in thrall to the past. All are guilty." - 5
"The ethos of facile transcendence...is that you can transform yourself into a higher being with little or no exertion required." - 6
Types of Gothic:
1) Terror Gothic (Freddy Krueger & O.J. Simpson)
2) Apocalyptic Gothic (Frankenstein & the USSR)
3) Internalized Gothic (Freud and
"The motif of the double...is...essential to the Gothic vision." - 9
"To be a Gothic antagonist, a character has to embody some measure of the good, even if it is a specious good." - 15
"Gothic thrives in a world where those in authority--the supposed exemplars of the good--are under suspicion. The mind of terror senses hypocrisy in high places." - 20
"To Hollywood, the Frankenstein story...is all about the dangers of technology and mad professors who sin against nature...More broadly, of course, the target is humanity, competing with Mother Nature when we should stand in awe." - 25
"Frankenstein is about mankind (the creature) facing an uncomprehending god...about the corrupting power of society...about the perils of repression, with the monster playing the role of Victor's murderous unconscious; about the role fo the artist and his work of art, takig n, as the saying goes, a life of its own." - 25
"But what makes the superego a hero-villain? The fact that we do not want to slay it out and out because we fear the consequences. Without inner prohibitions, anarchy would be loosed on the world." - 35